Sebastian Thrun

Sebastian Thrun is the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and is working, through robotics, to change the way we understand the world.

Why you should listen

Sebastian Thrun is a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where he also serves as the Director of the Stanford AI Lab. His research focuses on robotics and artificial intelligence. He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and which is exhibited in the Smithsonian.

Sebastian Thrun’s TED talk

Sebastian Thrun on the TED Blog

Scratch the surface of online education, and you’re destined to run into the names of two men. The first, Salman Khan, never intended to be an education icon. Instead, he simply watched with increased interest as videos he had uploaded to YouTube to help his cousin learn math were seized upon by a world apparently […]

“Questions Worth Asking” is a new editorial series from TED in which we’ll pose thorny questions to those with a thoughtful, relevant (or irrelevant but still interesting) take. This week: “What’s next for MOOCs?”, those online courses that have thrown a techno-bomb at traditional higher education. Here, a primer to catch you up if you’ve somehow managed […]

Above, Chris Fralic and friends take a tire-squealing ride in the Google self-driving car in spring 2011. Warning, profanity and lots of it. More video below. At TED2011, Sebastian Thrun from Google told us why he wanted to make a self-driving car: “Most automotive deaths are due to human error, not machine error. A driverless car can save lives.” Google’s […]